Long Beach Freeway

Six people were injured, two critically, when a van careened out of control Tuesday and slammed into an embankment on the Long Beach Freeway in South Gate, investigators said. Esperanza Loza Gutierrez and her husband, Luis, both 25, suffered severe head injuries when the van in which they were passengers struck two cars and spun out of control in the freeway's southbound lanes, north of Imperial Highway, shortly after 10 a.m., said California Highway Patrolman Craig Wilson.

From all four directions, cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles converged on the intersection of Valley Boulevard and Fremont Avenue in Alhambra, just down the road from where the Long Beach Freeway ends. It was a weekday evening rush hour and Public Works Director Terry James threaded his city-issue Chevrolet sedan through the traffic.

In his column "Freeway: Link to Community Disaster," Sam Hall Kaplan states, "In South Pasadena, if any one of a number of proposal routes is built, an estimated 10% of the city's land would be consumed. . . . " Fact: Land area of South Pasadena is 2,201.6 acres (3.44 square miles). Figures from Caltrans: Land consumption for the 2-mile section of the Meridian Variation in South Pasadena is approximately 100 acres, or less than 5% of the city's total area. Total area consumed by the entire 6.2-mile freeway gap closure project in El Sereno, South Pasadena and Pasadena is 240 acres.

The specter of the "missing link" in the Long Beach Freeway has thrown a long and profound shadow over South Pasadena, El Sereno and Pasadena for nearly 20 years. In South Pasadena, city officials say candidates for office haven't got a prayer if they support Caltrans' plan to complete the freeway through the heart of the city along Meridian Avenue, wiping out or damaging six historical districts. City leaders want to build it along the western edge of the city, over the Monterey Hills.

South Pasadena city officials are guardedly optimistic that they can block or slow down selection of the Meridian Variation as the last link of the Long Beach Freeway, even though state bureaucratic wheels continue to grind toward that choice. Recent developments have given the City Council new hope that the state Department of Transportation may be forced to conduct lengthy new studies, including consideration of a city-proposed westerly route that uses land in the Arroyo Seco.

For years it's been plain old State Route 7--the Long Beach Freeway. But no longer. The freeway has been elevated to national status and it's now U.S. Interstate 710. Making the new designation official, signs bearing the familiar red, white and blue interstate shield are going up along a 20-mile stretch of the freeway between Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach and the San Bernardino Freeway in Monterey Park.

Truck drivers grit their teeth, grind their gears and deride Interstate 710 running in and out of Long Beach because the pavement is so rough and the lanes so crowded. But the fact is, the 710--the Long Beach Freeway--also feels like a washboard because it bears the pounding of so much truck traffic to and from the Port of Long Beach. On weekday mornings, the southbound 710 jams up with trucks trying to reach the port.

One of the oddest stretches of Los Angeles is that area just northwest of Downtown that is bisected by the Hollywood Freeway: handsome, peeling Victorians facing out onto concrete retaining walls; old churches divorced from their flocks; strange, remote cul de sacs almost energized by their sudden isolation from great chunks of neighborhood that no longer exist.

No sooner had California Highway Patrol Officer Stuart Hertel merged onto the Long Beach Freeway than big riggers began barking a terse warning over their CB radios: "DOT bear southbound at 3rd Street." "They're talking about me: an officer with authority to enforce U.S. Department of Transportation laws," chuckled Hertel, who has been policing commercial traffic since 1993. "But truth is, there's so many of them, and so few of us, the odds are in their favor."